THE H-BOMB GIRL

by Stephen Baxter

  There was a special assembly at lunchtime that day, compulsory for everybody.

  As they all sat on their hard benches the headmaster, Mr Britten, walked on to the stage. He said the school was honoured to greet a special guest. “Lieutenant-Colonel Giuseppe Mortinelli the Third, US Air Force.”

  Laura was astonished when Mort walked in, beside Miss Wells. They all had to clap. Mort, in a sharp uniform, looked around the hall until he found Laura. He pointed at her, grinned and waved. Some of the girls turned around to look at her with envy.

  Laura hissed to Bernadette, “I can’t believe he’s here.” For all Miss Wells’s strangeness, she had thought of school as somewhere safe from him. Now that sanctuary was broken down.

  “He’s tall enough to wind the Liver clock,” Bernadette said. “Do you peek at him in the bathroom? Look at that jacksie.”

  “Shut up.”

  Mort launched into a brisk slide show. He said he was here to talk about Britain and America. “We have a Special Relationship, as your Prime Minister Macmillan calls it.” He showed slides of British and American troops fighting together in France during the war against Hitler.

  Then Mort talked about the new atomic age. “Today Americans and British stand side by side around the world, toe to toe in nuc-ular combat with the Rooskies.” Mort said he reported to the 574th Bomber Wing of the Strategic Air Command of the US Air Force. He showed a slide of a B-52 bomber, a plane that circled the North Pole for ever, waiting for war. Just one of these planes, he said, carried more firepower than all the bombs and shells used in World War Two. He seemed proud of this. Laura thought that was horrible.

  Mort showed a last slide. It was the shield of Strategic Air Command, with its motto:

  PEACE IS OUR PROFESSION

  Joel just laughed. “Fluff,” he muttered. “Propaganda.”

  Miss Wells led the applause, then asked for questions.

  “Do you play football in America?”

  “You mean soccer? We play our own football, which is like your rugger, I think.”

  “Do you have chewing gum in America?”

  “I think we invented it.”

  “Do you really say ‘line’ instead of ‘queue’?”

  “We don’t have too many queues in America.”

  “Have you heard of the Beatles?” That raised a laugh.

  Joel stood up. “What about Holy Loch?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Miss Wells snapped, “I didn’t point to you, Mister Christmas. Sit down.”

  But Joel said quickly, “Holy Loch is a base in Scotland. Americans have nuclear submarines there. It’s close to Glasgow. So the Americans have put a big British city in the front line of their nuclear war.”

  There was a ripple of excited noise among the kids, as there always was when somebody did something brave, or stupid.

  “It’s OK.” Mort held his hands up. “You’re well informed, young man. I can’t discuss operational details here. I mean, who controls what. But it makes no difference. The Special Relationship, remember. We’re all on the same side. Let’s take another question. You at the front with the teeth.”

  “Do you want to be an astronaut?”

  When the assembly broke up, Miss Wells said, “Mister Christmas. Go straight to the headmaster’s office.”

  Everybody poured through the corridors on the way to afternoon class, their chatter a noise like flocking birds.

  “Well, that was a laugh,” Bernadette said. “When Joel gets back, look for his goolies stapled to his CND badge.”

  “He was brave.”

  “Just showing off.”

  “It was creepy,” Laura muttered. “Seeing the two of them together like that. Mort and Miss Wells.”

  “Your two enemies,” Bernadette said, mocking. “Quite a coincidence.”

  “It’s not a coincidence at all. It’s obvious why he came here.”

  Maybe they were all in it together. Maybe Mort had orders from the Minuteman. Maybe Mort had been told to come to school to hook up with Miss Wells, just as he had started rummaging about in her smalls drawers.

  Bern was staring at her. “What are you on about? Why would Henry Fonda out there be interested in you?”

  “For my Key.”

  Bern laughed. “You’re kidding. You think he’s a spy too?”

  “Oh, shut up, Bern. I don’t know what to think.”

  They reached class, and went to their desks at the back.

  Bernadette said immediately, “Somebody’s been through my desk. You can always tell.”

  They checked Laura’s desk, and their bags, and their coat pockets. Everything had been rummaged through, searched, put back. Bernadette showed Laura how you could tell from small clues: dust traces, excessive neatness.

  Bernadette said, “Well, now we know why we were all kept in the hall over lunch. So they could search the place.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, that Key of yours, if you’re right. What else? Just as Miss Wells searched your desk for it when you were at PE, I suppose.”

  Laura looked at her. “You said they’re always searching the desks.”

  “Well, they are. But it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Maybe you’re right. Maybe they are all spies!” She was grinning.

  “You’re enjoying this. You’re laughing at me.”

  “Well, it’s better than fretting over my mum and her wash days, I’ll tell you that. What would James Bond think about all this? And the question is, why now? What’s going on?”

  Laura thought she knew what this was all about. She longed to tell Bernadette about Cuba, and the missiles, and the silent, invisible crisis that was pushing the world towards war. But Dad had made her promise to keep quiet, and, ashamed, she said nothing.

  The teacher walked in and everybody stood up, ready for class.

  “Let’s come back tonight,” Bernadette whispered.

  “To school? Why?”

  “I’ve got an idea. How we can get our own back. And maybe find out the truth about your mysterious auntie.”

  Friday 19th October. 4:30 p.m.

  Home from school.

  Mum is in the living room with Mort. He’s still in the uniform he wore at school. She is in one of her party frocks, and stiletto shoes, and bright lipstick on her face. They are laughing, wine glasses on the occasional table, dancing around to Glenn Miller.

  They didn’t hear me come in. Good.

  Nothing done in the house all day. Dishes from breakfast still in the sink. Hoover in the middle of the parlour floor.

  No smell of cooking. Friday is fish night. We always have smoked haddock. Not tonight.

  Mail not picked up from the mat. But there is a letter in there from Dad.

  The letter went on about Cuba.

  Things had got worse. American spy planes had seen more Russian missiles on Cuba, a more powerful kind than before. Now they were sure that Cuba could be a threat to the whole of the US, not just Florida, the nearest state.

  Dad wrote, “The question is, what’s JFK going to do about it? Bomb the missile bases? Invade Cuba? If he does that he might trigger global war. Or, should he do nothing about Khrushchev planting missiles in his own back yard? Then he looks weak.

  “I think he’s looking for some middle way to defuse the whole situation. But his Joint Chiefs of Staff—they’re his top soldiers—are pressing him to attack. The Russians will just cave in, they say. But the Joint Chiefs always want you to attack. Kennedy says the joke is that if he listens to them, and the world gets blown up as a consequence, none of us will be left alive to tell them they were wrong.”

  Dad wrote all this down with his fountain pen in his neat, sloping handwriting. She’d always loved his handwriting. Even his signature had flourishes.

  But the news was dismal. It was as if the whole world was a huge unexploded bomb that might go off any minute.

  She hid the letter. She tried to concentrate on her homework.

  Late
r, she heard Mort going out.

  Laura crept downstairs.

  Mum was sitting on the big settee, alone, listening to “Moonlight Serenade” on the Dansette. She had her legs crossed, one stiletto dangling from her toe. Her face blank, her head off in some other place, she looked very young, much younger than her thirty-three years. Her lipstick was smudged.

  She saw Laura, standing in the door. “Oh, hello, love. I didn’t know you were in. Come and sit with your mum.” She patted the settee.

  Laura turned down the volume on the Dansette, and sat down. Mum sighed and rested her head on Laura’s shoulder. Laura had to take her weight. Mum was behaving like a child, not a mother. Laura smelled perfume, hair spray—and maybe just a hint of Mort’s iron-tinged aftershave.

  “I’ve had a lovely afternoon,” Mum said.

  “I can tell. With Mort.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “All that old wartime music. Dad hates it, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, well, your father isn’t here.” Mum straightened up, pulling away from Laura, and primped her hair. “You might try to understand, Laura. You’re so—ooh, you’re so judgemental sometimes. Like a little old woman sitting there looking at me. Life isn’t easy for me just now, you know. I like to think about good times.”

  “Like the war.”

  “Yes, the war. In the beginning it was quite fun, you know. I was ten when it all kicked off. The ration cards, and your own little gas mask, and blackouts, and running to the air-raid shelter in the back garden. Of course it all got a bit difficult with the bombing.”

  Laura had heard the story before. Liverpool had had it hard. The docks were the main way food and supplies from overseas got into the country. In the worst of the Blitz, there were so many ships sunk in the Mersey there wasn’t a single berth free for docking.

  Mum, younger than Laura was now, was evacuated, along with thousands of other inner-city kids. She was sent on a train to North Wales, and lodged with a family in Rhyl. But Mum had hated it. “I always was a city girl,” she would say breezily.

  Laura had heard hints that things had been more difficult than that. Somebody had harmed Mum in some way. It happened, to vulnerable kids, lodged with strangers far from home. And Mum had always been pretty.

  Anyhow she was taken back from Wales, and sent from one city to another: down to London, to be with a cousin of her father’s. Peggy, a twenty-something girl, had a flat in the West End, tiny but big enough for two girls to share. Of course London had its share of bombing, but the East End and the docks had it worst, and the West End was safer than Liverpool. And at least now Mum was with family.

  “London was a fairyland, as long as a bomb didn’t actually fall on you,” Mum said. “The searchlights waving across the sky like wands. The barrage balloons like great whales in the air. Star flares like fireworks. I was just about your age then, Laura.

  “Even when the bombs fell it could be, well, marvellous. Sometimes a building would just jump up and settle back, unharmed, in a great cloud of dust. Or you would see waves passing through brickwork, like shaking a sheet. After a big raid Peggy and I would walk around Piccadilly or Trafalgar Square or along the Strand, just looking. Dust covered everything, making it all pink or grey.

  “And whenever there wasn’t a raid, in the dark—the blackout, you know—we’d go crazy. No rules! We’d dance and dance.”

  “You danced with Mort.”

  “Oh, yes, with Mort. The Americans in town, you know, with their chocolate and cigarettes and stockings. No rationing for them! It was all terribly glamorous, really… Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I’m just thinking that if I went with soldiers like that you’d murder me.”

  “Yes, well, you’re you and I’m me, you’re just a little prig and I was mature for my age. You know what I think? I think you’re jealous. Jealous because you live in this drab time, when everything is boring and rubbish. Jealous, because you were born too late.”

  Maybe, Laura thought. For sure, if war came again, there wouldn’t be much dancing.

  She faced facts. She wasn’t going to get any help from Mum with Mort, or Miss Wells, or any of the problems in her life. She felt resentful. She even resented the way Mum was leaning on her now.

  But maybe it was just the way things were. Bernadette had to look out for her mother. If it was going to be the same for Laura, well, she’d just have to put up with it.

  She stood up. “What’s for tea?”

  “Oh, I don’t care. Go and get some fish and chips. My purse is in the kitchen.” She settled back on the settee, her party dress splayed around her. “And put my record back on, will you?”

  Chapter 9

  That evening Laura crept out of the house without her mother noticing.

  She met Bernadette and Joel at the railings at the back of the school grounds. It was eight o’clock, dark, cold. They were all wearing black, at Bernadette’s suggestion.

  Joel looked subdued.

  Laura asked, “Did they give you a tough time after assembly?”

  Joel shrugged. “That cow Miss Wells tore into me. Mr Britten told me he approved of my ‘enquiring mind.’ I just had to channel it in the right direction.” He tried to sound casual, but Laura could see how wide his eyes were. He was no tougher than she was, really. “He isn’t so bad, old Bulldog Britten. Even if he did give me one thousand lines.”

  Bernadette whistled softly. “One thousand. That’s an all-time record, pal. They ought to engrave your name on the gateposts. Anyway, let’s get on with it.”

  “Get on with what?”

  “Just follow me.”

  It didn’t take long for Laura to realise they were going to break into the school.

  First they had to get over the railings, which were eight feet tall with spikes on the top. Bernadette was wearing a long black scarf. “Not by accident,” she said. She threw the scarf up so it caught over a spike. Then she hauled herself up, hands on the scarf, feet walking up the railings. At the top she easily climbed over the spikes and let herself down.

  Laura followed. The physical exercise, and the sense of breaking the rules, got her blood pumping.

  When Joel was over, they ran across a stretch of playing field. Joel limped, but kept up.

  They came to a side door that led to the changing rooms.

  Joel said, “We haven’t got a key.”

  Bernadette just walked up to the door and pushed. It was open. She sang, “Ta-da!”

  Laura hissed, “How did you know?”

  Bernadette put her fingers to her lips. Then she beckoned, and led them into the school.

  The old building was a maze of corridors which Laura still hadn’t got to know well, and it all seemed different in the dark. But Bernadette led the way confidently.

  They came to the staffroom, the converted store cupboard. Bernadette peered underneath the door. No light showed.

  But a little way down the corridor light spilled from a room, and there was a rumble of voices. Joel looked panicky.

  Bernadette just pushed open the staffroom door. The three of them crept inside, into the dark, and Bernadette shut the door. Then she clicked on a torch, lighting up their three faces from below.

  “Cor,” Bernadette said. “You can tell it’s the staffroom just from the stink of ciggies.”

  Joel whispered, “How did you know we could do this?”

  “I knew about the meeting. Teachers and governors. They’d leave the school open until it was done. And I knew they would meet in a classroom or somewhere, not in this poky cupboard of a staffroom.” She was grinning, and sounded smug.

  Laura admired the way she had thought through all this, and the cool way she was carrying it out. Reading bored Bernadette, and she struggled in class. But she had other skills, organisation and determination and courage, that just weren’t being picked up at school.

  “And why,” Joel said, “are we here at all?”

  Bernade
tte said, “They searched our stuff today. So tonight it’s our turn.”

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Proof of what they’re up to. That or ciggies.” She grinned.

  It really was all just a laugh to her, Laura thought. It was a huge risk to be taking. But at least they might find out a bit more.

  Bernadette used the torch to find Miss Wells’s name on a locker. The locker was padlocked, as they all were. But Bernadette was prepared for this too. She pulled a hairpin from the lapel of her jacket, and stuck it inside the lock, wiggling it back and forth.

  Joel said, “How come you know how to pick a lock?”

  “To get money off my mother. She might live on gin. I can’t, or the baby. Mind you we’re that skint we switch the gas off when we turn the bacon over.”

  “Oh, you’re funny,” Joel hissed, tense.

  There was a soft click. “Aha,” Bernadette said. Delicately, trying not to make a noise, she opened the padlock and lifted it away from the locker. “Open Sesame.” She pulled back the locker door.

  She began to lift stuff out. Some of it was uninteresting. A scarf, a pair of tights, pens, a box of chalk. A comb, a “biddy rake,” as Bernadette called it.

  Then she found a little leather wallet, which folded out to reveal plastic cards.

  They inspected the cards by torchlight. “This one’s pretty,” Bernadette said. “A ‘credit card.’ But what does ‘chip and pin’ mean?”

  “Beats me,” Joel said.

  “This one says it’s a driving licence,” Laura said. It was a little pink card with a photograph of Miss Wells on it. “I’ve seen my dad’s driving licence. It’s a big bit of paper. This isn’t a driving licence. And what’s this on the back?” It was a row of vertical black lines, all different thicknesses.

  “A code, maybe,” Joel said. “A code made of bars.” His voice was quiet.

  Bernadette rummaged about some more, and pulled out what looked like a wristwatch, with a gold strap and glass cover. But it had no hands. On its face were numbers that changed as they watched. 20:38:04. 20:38:05. 20:38:06…